To help give a more diverse group of inventors, entrepreneurs and researchers the tools they need to bring bold science and engineering ideas to the marketplace, NSF has formed new public and private partnerships to give a larger community of innovators access to NSF's successful Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program. This expansion coincided with the first-ever Demo Day at the White House in August 2015. Find out more in this news release.
Credit: Wearless Tech, Inc.

The Industrial Innovation and Partnerships Division of the Directorate for Engineering serves the entire foundation by fostering partnerships to advance technological innovation and plays an important role in the public-private innovation partnership enterprise. IIP seeks to successfully invest in science and engineering research across all disciplines that have the potential for high impact in meeting national and societal needs.

Eureka Park is an area dedicated to up-and-coming technology born from fundamental science and engineering innovation, at the world's largest consumer electronics event, the International CES®. In this series of videos, NSF features some of its SBIR grantees who presented at the 2015 CES.

February 1, 2016

Small business, big stage: NSF-funded start-ups at CES 2016

The familiar phrase "wearing your heart on your sleeve" took on a whole new meaning during the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Wearable health tracking devices broke into full stride and some of them got a head start from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Nearly two dozen NSF-funded small businesses were among the companies giving consumers a sneak peek at pre-market technologies, which go beyond health tech to feature robotics, virtual reality, sensors and more in an area of CES known as Eureka Park. NSF co-founded Eureka Park in 2012 to showcase early stage technology.

"Our program funds small businesses, mainly start-ups that are developing game-changing technologies that have a big commercial upside -- they could add jobs, boost the economy and help maintain the U.S. technological edge worldwide," says Steven Konsek, a program director for NSF's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. "Nearly all the NSF-funded companies at CES have gone on to raise private capital, in part because of our work with them."

Those companies include femtoScale, a Denver start-up that is developing a portable and eventually wearable sensor to provide real time readings of air quality; San Jose, California-based Stratio, Inc., which has shrunk a spectrometer down to palm size so you can inspect your own food and medicine; Aventusoft, LLC of Boca Raton, Florida, which is developing a wearable heart monitor and electrocardiogram; and Salt Lake City-based Veristride, a company using sensors in insoles to provide real-time biomechanics.

Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations presented in this material are only those of the presenter grantee/researcher, author, or agency employee; and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.